Elderly people have a higher risk of falling, for example, in residential environments. As most of elder people will need immediate help after such a fall, it is crucial that these falls are monitored and addressed upon in real time. Specifically, one fifth of falling elders are admitted to hospital after staying on floor for over one hour following a fall. The late admission increases the risk of dehydration, pressure ulcers, hypothermia, and pneumonia. Acute falls leads to high psychological effect of fear and high impact on daily life quality.
Most of the existing personal emergency response systems (PERS), which take the form of fall detectors and alarm buttons, are wearable devices. These wearable devices have several disadvantages. First, they cannot recognize the human body positioning and posture.
Second, they suffer from limited acceptance and use due to: Elders' perception and image issues, high rate of false alarms and miss-detects, elders neglect re-wearing when getting out of bed or bath, and, and long term usage of wearable might lead to user skin irritations. Third, the wearable PERS are used mainly after experiencing a fall (very limited addressable market).
Therefore, there is a need for a paradigm shift toward automated and remote monitoring systems.